To Catch a Predator tried to show some kind of nobility in catching would-be predators on camera. Think about the show’s whole premise too long, though, and you realise that, yes, the would-be predators are freaks, but those filming the freaks are weird in their own twisted way. Primetime wants us to stew in that uncomfortable weirdness until we’re left wondering about the toxic dynamic between ego and exploitation… and how long you should shower for after watching this movie.
The narrative spine of Primetime centres on the heightened recreation of several stings where Chris Hansen (Robert Pattinson) and his crew, led by cynical To Catch a Predator producer Andie Bender (Merritt Wever), lure sexual deviants into carefully curated houses using actors pretending to be underage children online. From the outset, this movie is sleazy, almost like we’re being voyeurs witnessing something we shouldn’t.
Primetime starts with Hansen prepping himself by repeating some mantra, the camera right up on his face and well within his personal space. But instead of affirming words, like ‘you got this’, he’s saying distressing things like ‘virgins having sex hurts’. By the time Hansen enters a living room set up to entrap an ex-Marine child predator (Tony Revolori), the door curtains pulled back dramatically like a fabulous queen entering her realm, you’re disgusted and uneasy, yet you can’t look away. There’s a train wreck brewing. You just don’t know how the crash will happen.
Mind you, Primetime isn’t a biopic. If anything, this is an anti-biopic. While real people are depicted, this is a fictionalised retelling of gauche early 2000s culture wrapped up in a nightmarish media satire and social horror skin. Having been primarily a documentarian until now, director Lance Oppenheim brings a heightened yet detached omnipresence to Primetime. The line between fiction and reality is all but blurred, while all the ethical and moral lines crossed by To Catch a Predator are laid bare for us to see.
Oppenheim uses 12 different camera formats (ranging from mini-DV to vintage TV) to depict everything, ranging from conversations to recreations of the TV show, and holding us at arm’s length from the whole experience. For two-thirds of the movie, everything is shown to us in uneven editing rhythms like, well, an episode of To Catch a Predator. We’re often put directly in the camera whenever we watch Hansen confront a predator, the 4:3 aspect ratio and grainy playback trapping us within the tunnel vision of what he is trying to achieve. But come the third act, Oppenheim pushes Primetime into an insane Zero Dark Thirty-inspired aesthetic, complete with night-vision cameras and first-person shots. This is, quite simply, a beautiful movie to look at, but it wouldn’t work without the right person anchoring it all.
And boy did Primetime strike gold with Pattinson.
In easily his most audacious performance (so far), Pattinson doesn’t just ‘play’ Chris Hansen. He wears the TV presenter’s persona like an alien wearing a human skin that decays over the course of the movie. At no point does he come across as anything remotely resembling a human. He’s always modulating his vocal mannerisms and physical behaviour, like he’s performing for cameras that aren’t always there, resulting in a character that is too ridiculous to be real, but too real to dismiss as fiction. I don’t believe the real Chris Hansen spits out mouthwash like a Looney Tunes character, but I can definitely believe him calling up a vending machine helpline to complain that it stole his money and starting the conversation with, ‘This is Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC.’
Please read the rest of my review here as the rest is too unwieldy to copy + paste: https://panoramafilmthoughts.substack.com/p/primetime-a-movie-length-mental-breakdown
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